Guild Wars 2

Haralin.1473:

The thief is the best stomper cause you cannot interupt their stomp in downstate,

In conclusion: If you go down first in a 1v1, you’re probably going to lose the 1v1. “I can’t get back up and win after a thief downs me because they stealthed” has very little to do with the thief stealthing and a huge amount to do with trying to win a 1v1 from the downed state.

If it isn’t 1v1 then you’re fine, it isn’t your sole responsibility to stop the thief, and your team-mates can counter stealth stomp quite easily.

So i have been lvling a thief and here is what i have noticed if try to melee at low lvls you get slaughtered. The short bow is the only viable weapon for lvling at lower lvls when u melee it requires you to stealth which resets mobs so their health regens. Its pretty tuff to do melee compared to my warrior or guardian an even my ranger. Anyways im not complaining cause once you get traits unlocked it becomes a better option to run daggers but at the beginning say 10-40ish i have noticed your way to squishy to melee. Thats just my opinion after lvling 3 other professions to 80.

Wobels.1679:

So i have been lvling a thief and here is what i have noticed if try to melee at low lvls you get slaughtered. The short bow is the only viable weapon for lvling at lower lvls when u melee it requires you to stealth which resets mobs so their health regens. Its pretty tuff to do melee compared to my warrior or guardian an even my ranger. Anyways im not complaining cause once you get traits unlocked it becomes a better option to run daggers but at the beginning say 10-40ish i have noticed your way to squishy to melee. Thats just my opinion after lvling 3 other professions to 80.

Sword/pistol solution serves well

The trait Hidden Theif never seems to work out the way I would like. Firing it off while my character is auto attacking will cause her to knock herself out of cloak. Additionally, some weapon combos ( p/d for instance) immediately auto attacks after stealing whether in or out of combat, thus resulting in a decloak.

I’ve dealing with this by rolling back and switching weapons, but I don’t think this should be necessary. It’s also a bit telegraphic (if that’s the right word) in pvp.

callabhan.3627:

The trait Hidden Theif never seems to work out the way I would like. Firing it off while my character is auto attacking will cause her to knock herself out of cloak. Additionally, some weapon combos ( p/d for instance) immediately auto attacks after stealing whether in or out of combat, thus resulting in a decloak.

I’ve dealing with this by rolling back and switching weapons, but I don’t think this should be necessary. It’s also a bit telegraphic (if that’s the right word) in pvp.

Yes, this trait is useless because of this, I call it bugged, but it´s probably only badly coded like a lot of other traits across the classes.

STRanger.5120:

XENus.6931:

here are the main issues,
PVE!
1. Too paperish… When i got ganked by just 2 monsters, I will just get instantly DESTROYED, which make melee hard. I’m suppose to be an Assassin not a guy who uses a shortbow/ dual pistol sitting at the corner shooting people. I can dodge but what if my endurance level is low, i cant do anything.

2. The pistol skills are too underpowered. The 3rd skill is epic. But the 1st,2nd, and 4th skill just does not do exptected damage.

3.Not much AOE skills, if i do not have a shortbow in my hands, i just get destroyed by 2 mobs. And I suggest that Dagger Main Hand’s 1st skill should be able to damage multiple mobs, except for the last animation.

4.Sword/Dagger. Its so ridiculous how much damage this combination do. The only good skill in my opinion is the 1st and 4th skill thats it. I suggest that u change the 3rd skill, making it balance with the other weapons, so it won’t be underrated.

5. Overall the thief is EXTREMELY underpowered in PVE. Useless in dungeons. Not able to deal enough damage. Classes like elementalist, guardian,warrior,ranger can easily dominate thief. Yes warrior and guardian are op, but look at this.
Guardian/Warrior – Heavy Armor/Big Damage/Able to survive
Elementalist- LA/Insane Damage/Glass Cannon
Ranger- MA/Reasonable damage/Have a pet to tank.
Thief – MA/Awful damage/Die alot
So i would rather play the classes listed above than thief.

Thanks Anet for reading this. I hope that u would really make this class balanced and not underpowered. This class really have potential. Really wanted to play this class, as i wanna be an assassin but unfortunately this class is so underpowered in PVE.

Hi, I don´t feel underpowered in PvE as you´ve described, not nearly as that.
Can you please post your build/equipment so we can look at it and maybe help with your performance?

10/30/30 i cant survive ._. i always get owned with 2 monsters
And sry i said that thief does awful damage is the S/D and P/P weapon combination. And i agree that its not underpowered if classes like Warrior is balanced if not its underpowered

I have a few complain about thief class. i find turning invisible just unfair i play pvp and room is full of thief getting really tired of fighting invisible enemies im chasing them everywhere i am vulnerable to other attacks when i do take them down i am still vulnerable cause they just wont stay down teleporting everywhere like rabbits attacking me from floor give them an outline give people a fighting chance.

My feedback on the thief profession:

Although I find the majority of complaints about thieves to be funny, some do have merit.

I’ve played most of the classes (minus Necro, Ranger, and Engi) up to 50+. I have a Mesmer, Guardian, and Warrior sitting at 80, while my Thief and Ele are in the 70’s. I played the large variety of classes for so many levels simply to better appreciate how to win with/against them in WvW on the off-chance I run into one solo.

I have very little trouble with Thieves on any of my characters most of the time. Why? Because I don’t build straight glass cannon. The way I see it (again, having played a thief into the 70’s), thieves are enforcers of Darwinism. If you go glass cannon, you deserve to die to a class designed from the ground up to kill glass cannons. Thus if you are unwilling to evolve your mindset and continue to fall prey to a class designed to kill you, you deserve to die. Repeatedly. Over and over, somehow naively expecting a different outcome until the truth gets beaten into your now-bloody skull.

It’s not just thieves can do this, but they do it best. A warrior can burst you down easily using a combination of frenzy and hundred blades or rifle #3. A mesmer can do it through sword #3, dodge roll clone, phantasm, sword #2, shatter. A ranger can do it with the bow rapid fire. Etc… The only difference about the thief is that you don’t necessarily see it coming. But the counter to the thief is exactly the same as the counter to the above: don’t build glass cannon.

Now, I do take issue with thieves being able to hold up the capture of an objective indefinitely. No, I’m not talking about the flag points. Those are small areas that are easy to AoE the heck out of. I’m talking about supply camps. Those are large enough, and often have enough obstructions, for a thief to hide out in indefinitely. I know, I’ve done it. I’ve held a camp for 10 minutes against 20+ people that stacked up and AoE’d, but weren’t able to do so in a complete manner as I had a LOT of room to work with. Even though I managed this, I found it stupid. I should not have been able to hold up a cap for that amount of time, by myself, spamming nothing more than two buttons with the occasional third.

That’s my take on thieves. I kill them solo all the time. Darwin award winners die to them all the time. Something needs to be done about the stealth capture hold-up mechanics.

(A point of clarification: My thief is not my main. My warrior is. And before you “100b newb” me, I don’t use the greatsword. I don’t use the rifle. I prefer the CC that Sword/Shield + Hammer yields. I will immobilize, knockback, knockdown, and stun you to death.)

XENus.6931:

10/30/30 i cant survive ._. i always get owned with 2 monsters
And sry i said that thief does awful damage is the S/D and P/P weapon combination. And i agree that its not underpowered if classes like Warrior is balanced if not its underpowered

What Equipment do you wear?
I´m running the same build (by points, trait choice is somewhat clear in this one), so maybe I can help you with that…

I’m sure it’s already been said, but initiative is a broken mechanic. It’s the main problem with the Thief profession.

No cooldown abilities coupled with nearly inexhaustible initiative? Add in incredible survival mechanisms (stealth, spammable evasion attacks, etc.) and excellent damage, either directly or through conditions, and you have a profession that’s going to stay on top of the food chain until you change initiative.

Thief abilities need cooldowns like everyone else.

nldixon.8514:

I’m sure it’s already been said, but initiative is a broken mechanic. It’s the main problem with the Thief profession.

Funny, the main complaint I see about thieves is the backstab combo which never repeats a single skill that would get a CD.

nldixon.8514:

….with nearly inexhaustible initiative?

Now you´re just kidding right? That can´t be happening in the real world. Have you ever played the class?

Haralin.1473:

Elthan.5246:

Haralin.1473:

Give other Classes a Stealth dedection, maybe on pets and turrets or somthing like that or lower Steath to max 6 sec and every action heartseaker/rezz or finishing people should break the stealth.

Fix the rendering issues on Stealhtclasses not only Thief.

Reduce the massive Burst on thief but not touch the overall damage done over time.

Buff Condition Build a bit and this not only on Thiefs

Sometimes I wonder if people read what they wrote… Don’t do a feedback if your only concern is to delete the class from the game. You want to nerf the stomp capabilities on one of the worst stomper in the game? You want to remove the only supportive ability of the thief (SR rez) Really ? Please Anet, dont touch to stealth before fixing the (overrated) culling effect. Ideas like this would just make the class totally useless.

I play both Thief and Engi and you talk about the worst stomper, i cannot take it serious compared to engi which can not get 100% stability to stomb. The thief is the best stomper cause you cannot interupt their stomp in downstate, cause you cannot aim at him the only thing which works ae knockback and blind but not every class have it. And with Quickness+Stealth it gets even more powerfull.

A thief as way more utily for group, not only Stealthrezz.

This game is not about 1v1, in tourneys thieves can’t really stomp because of his squishiness and his lack of stab. A sltealthed thief can still be knocked back by a guardian or be annihilate by AoEs pretty easily. Also, i’m curious about D/D thief’s group utility beside shadow refuge … Nearly no boons for the team and absolutely no CC.

Yes, I have a Thief. With the right build you can have initiative out the wazoo.

It’s not a fun profession (for me personally), so I don’t play it often. There are so many ways to regain initiative, it’s ridiculous. A dagger/dagger build with the right traits will pretty much never run out of initiative if you know what you’re doing.

It’s boring, but it’s effective. There’s a reason there are so many Death Blossom Thieves popping up in hotjoin all the sudden.

nldixon.8514:

Yes, I have a Thief. With the right build you can have initiative out the wazoo.

It’s not a fun profession (for me personally), so I don’t play it often. There are so many ways to regain initiative, it’s ridiculous. A dagger/dagger build with the right traits will pretty much never run out of initiative if you know what you’re doing.

If by “know what you are doing” you mean the 5, 1 (backstab), 1, 1, 1 => back to start combo, there’s no wonder the thief never runs out of initiative since he barely never uses it.

I should add that this combo only works in PvE against bosses you can melee and don’t turn around randomly all the times. Which is a very uncommon beast, especially in fractals once you increase the difficulty a little.

stof.9341:

nldixon.8514:

Yes, I have a Thief. With the right build you can have initiative out the wazoo.

It’s not a fun profession (for me personally), so I don’t play it often. There are so many ways to regain initiative, it’s ridiculous. A dagger/dagger build with the right traits will pretty much never run out of initiative if you know what you’re doing.

If by “know what you are doing” you mean the 5, 1 (backstab), 1, 1, 1 => back to start combo, there’s no wonder the thief never runs out of initiative since he barely never uses it.

I should add that this combo only works in PvE against bosses you can melee and don’t turn around randomly all the times. Which is a very uncommon beast, especially in fractals once you increase the difficulty a little.

I’m not even sure you read my post. The BS build is pretty nasty, yes.

Death Blossom builds are (arguably) worse.

Tringsh.2380:

Thief isn’t half as squishy as people make out, you just have to choose between massive DPS or more def/hp and most people go for DPS. Personally I get along fine. However when lvling at the start it was hard as hell.

Pistol/Pistol – The auto attack animation should have both pistols being fired alternately, limited to 1 skill, unload, needs a rethink.

Sword Pistol is fine! learn to use the other skills.

Short bow has underwhelming DPS.

Stealthing on steal doesn’t always work as you end up hitting the mob with the last attack you made. This should always make you stealth as it can ruin a combo. I never use steal for skills it’s for initiative and stealth or gap closer.

I’m rolling with 30 SA, Divinity runes and Zerker setup and I’m more survivable than my 25k HP Warrior or my 17k HP offensive Guardian.

Stealth and Blind spam is better than any armor.

Shortbow is amazing. I contribute greatly to any team fight I wouldn’t otherwise be able to approach because of the AoEs. And it provides crazy utility on top of 4k Cluster Bombs and 1.2k Trick Shots. One of the best “off-hand” weapons in the game for any class.

nldixon.8514:

stof.9341:

nldixon.8514:

Yes, I have a Thief. With the right build you can have initiative out the wazoo.

It’s not a fun profession (for me personally), so I don’t play it often. There are so many ways to regain initiative, it’s ridiculous. A dagger/dagger build with the right traits will pretty much never run out of initiative if you know what you’re doing.

If by “know what you are doing” you mean the 5, 1 (backstab), 1, 1, 1 => back to start combo, there’s no wonder the thief never runs out of initiative since he barely never uses it.

I should add that this combo only works in PvE against bosses you can melee and don’t turn around randomly all the times. Which is a very uncommon beast, especially in fractals once you increase the difficulty a little.

I’m not even sure you read my post. The BS build is pretty nasty, yes.

Death Blossom builds are (arguably) worse.

Facing the fact that you cannot regenerate the initiative fast enough when using DB spam, you´ve just denied your own argument….

STRanger.5120:

nldixon.8514:

stof.9341:

nldixon.8514:

Yes, I have a Thief. With the right build you can have initiative out the wazoo.

It’s not a fun profession (for me personally), so I don’t play it often. There are so many ways to regain initiative, it’s ridiculous. A dagger/dagger build with the right traits will pretty much never run out of initiative if you know what you’re doing.

If by “know what you are doing” you mean the 5, 1 (backstab), 1, 1, 1 => back to start combo, there’s no wonder the thief never runs out of initiative since he barely never uses it.

I should add that this combo only works in PvE against bosses you can melee and don’t turn around randomly all the times. Which is a very uncommon beast, especially in fractals once you increase the difficulty a little.

I’m not even sure you read my post. The BS build is pretty nasty, yes.

Death Blossom builds are (arguably) worse.

Facing the fact that you cannot regenerate the initiative fast enough when using DB spam, you´ve just denied your own argument….

Have you ever played a Death Blossom build? It’s incredibly easy to regenerate initiative. And you don’t “spam” Death Blossom (also, I never said that in any of my posts) with a DB build.

nldixon.8514:

I’m not even sure you read my post. The BS build is pretty nasty, yes.

Death Blossom builds are (arguably) worse.

Death Blossom builds run out of initiative in no time and must gear up in endurance regen as much as possible to survive on dodges until initiative is back available. Death Blossom builds do all their damage through bleeding, through a single instance of a condition that every single condition removal skill in the game will nullify.

And lastly, Death Blossom actually applies far too few bleeding stacks to kill anything quickly by itself. The build in fact relies a lot on the Caltrop utility. Step out of the caltrop ring and the thief cannot damage you fast enough to kill you.

And let’s not talk about how hard an elementalist with the shock shield skill counters Death Blossom builds.

You can argue about builds as much as you like, it doesn’t change the fact that the initiative mechanic is broken.

Thieves need to have cooldowns on their weapon skills, just like everybody else.

nldixon.8514:

Have you ever played a Death Blossom build? It’s incredibly easy to regenerate initiative. And you don’t “spam” Death Blossom (also, I never said that in any of my posts) with a DB build.

Yes, I had, that´s why I commented on this. The question is, if you don´t run out of initiative, what you do with the DB build? You use DB once or twice and then? Because the third usage would take the rest of initiative left…
You will autoattack, or caltrops/dodge and waste your precious evades? Enlighten me please.

nldixon.8514:

You can argue about builds as much as you like, it doesn’t change the fact that the initiative mechanic is broken.

Thieves need to have cooldowns on their weapon skills, just like everybody else.

And what about deletion of the class completely? That would:

1) Fix the problems a lot of ppl have
2) Remove the balancing issues/fixing of the whole one proffesion, awesome
3) Made most of the Thieves reroll Warrior, because that´s what Thief with cooldowns basically would be…..

STRanger.5120:

nldixon.8514:

Have you ever played a Death Blossom build? It’s incredibly easy to regenerate initiative. And you don’t “spam” Death Blossom (also, I never said that in any of my posts) with a DB build.

Yes, I had, that´s why I commented on this. The question is, if you don´t run out of initiative, what you do with the DB build? You use DB once or twice and then? Because the third usage would take the rest of initiative left…
You will autoattack, or caltrops/dodge and waste your precious evades? Enlighten me please.

You use Cloak and Dagger, Roll for Initiative, Shadow Refuge, or any of the other abilities that allow you to regain initiative, then you Death Blossom some more. Rinse and repeat.

It’s not really an issue of the build. That was just an example I used to illustrate how broken the initiative mechanic is.

nldixon.8514:

STRanger.5120:

nldixon.8514:

Have you ever played a Death Blossom build? It’s incredibly easy to regenerate initiative. And you don’t “spam” Death Blossom (also, I never said that in any of my posts) with a DB build.

Yes, I had, that´s why I commented on this. The question is, if you don´t run out of initiative, what you do with the DB build? You use DB once or twice and then? Because the third usage would take the rest of initiative left…
You will autoattack, or caltrops/dodge and waste your precious evades? Enlighten me please.

You use Cloak and Dagger, Roll for Initiative, Shadow Refuge, or any of the other abilities that allow you to regain initiative, then you Death Blossom some more. Rinse and repeat.

It’s not really an issue of the build. That was just an example I used to illustrate how broken the initiative mechanic is.

Are you aware that this way you wouldn´t kill anyone? And those utilities you named has a minute-long cooldown, what you do next, after those some more blossoms?

Edit: Well, if you don´t get yourself killed in the Shadow Refuge?

STRanger.5120:

nldixon.8514:

STRanger.5120:

nldixon.8514:

Have you ever played a Death Blossom build? It’s incredibly easy to regenerate initiative. And you don’t “spam” Death Blossom (also, I never said that in any of my posts) with a DB build.

Yes, I had, that´s why I commented on this. The question is, if you don´t run out of initiative, what you do with the DB build? You use DB once or twice and then? Because the third usage would take the rest of initiative left…
You will autoattack, or caltrops/dodge and waste your precious evades? Enlighten me please.

You use Cloak and Dagger, Roll for Initiative, Shadow Refuge, or any of the other abilities that allow you to regain initiative, then you Death Blossom some more. Rinse and repeat.

It’s not really an issue of the build. That was just an example I used to illustrate how broken the initiative mechanic is.

Are you aware that this way you wouldn´t kill anyone? And those utilities you named has a minute-long cooldown, what you do next, after those some more blossoms?

No, you can kill plenty of people that way. Caltrops, Death Blossom, going into stealth, coming out with Backstabs, Death Blossoming some more, going back into stealth… It’s pretty easy to stack bleeds and still do a respectable amount of direct damage.

It’s not hard. The fact that Thieves have pretty powerful abilities and lack cooldowns is the problem. Initiative and a lack of a cooldown is the issue. Not the builds. So I’m not going to continue to argue with you about the builds.

nldixon.8514:

You use Cloak and Dagger

C&D regains initiative now? Awesome!

Sorry but the Death Blossom builds aren’t awesome. At best they are average to weak in PvP. Why would you take an average build and use it as a basis that thief needs initiative removed is beyond me.

Ok writing all things I learned so far and my own conclusions:

Problem Nr1

Thief is actualy more decision based class then cooldowns. Warrior use skill nr2 skill….skill nr5 and swaps weapeons.

Look how this works on thief weapeon set(D/D)(if i falowed some rotations)

12 Innitiative at start>skill nr2>9innitiative>skill nr3>4 innitiave>skill nr4>0 innitiaitive>cant cast skill nr5 Weapeon swap Does not allow us to use skills from other weapeon either.

Conclusion:

Thief has to use lesser ammount of skills and its attacks has to be more powerfull as number of those attacks is limited few times more then other class which fallows rotations.

Outcome: Thief will spam most effective skill for curent situation ignoring other skills and weapeon swaps.

Ways to fix: it is balanced in weapeons that has invisibility or relying on our utility cooldown.(stealth, shadowstep to get away from battle for a while). Change/add some way to enter stealth/shadowstep in more innitiative heavy sets

Problem Nr2

Weapeon set P/P has no access to invisibility and no way to stop damage from incoming for prolonged periods of time. It also involves most pistol offhands making them less usefull.

Conclusion: Pistol offhand is less safe to use then dagger offhand, and is counterable more easy.

Outcome: Most thief builds use dagger offhand. This lowers build diversity by basicly 40%

Ways to fix: Stealth in pistol offhand or reduced innitative costs, on it, letting to use defencive skills more often instead of using more effective ones in dagger offhand.

Problem nr3

Steal mechanic is less diverse, less ranged friendly and less usefull then other class mechanics.

Conclusion:This mechanic is useless for people who want to stay at range. For melee thiefs this either serves mainly as either utility(buffs and their stealing/sharing) or addition to burst( mug>CnD>backstab).

Outcome: Steal is either used to the extreme level or to 0 usefullness.

Ways to fix: Adding additional skill slots in skill mechanic(explanation below)

F1 shadowstep to enemy and deal damage.
F2 search the ground for usable items.(would be feathers/tuft/rock/Icicle/branch)
F3 Stores item Stolen using F1
F4 Stores item found using F2

This way ranged people could use thief mechanics not going in melee range

Problem nr4

Low ammount of viable tourament/competative PvP sets

Conclusion: Even if problem nr1 was fixed thief would still have less builds then most other classes.

Outcome: Most thiefs play tottaly same builds.

Ways to fix: New offhand weapeon would fix it all.(or as some people suggested balanced solo wield weapeons for thiefs alone(5 skills on solo weapeon)
Sword offhand, axe offhand.
These 2 offhands are already usable by other classes, so it would not be a problem adding them to thief aresenal. This would 3 new types of builds for Thief.

Might add more later.

nldixon.8514:

STRanger.5120:

nldixon.8514:

STRanger.5120:

nldixon.8514:

Have you ever played a Death Blossom build? It’s incredibly easy to regenerate initiative. And you don’t “spam” Death Blossom (also, I never said that in any of my posts) with a DB build.

Yes, I had, that´s why I commented on this. The question is, if you don´t run out of initiative, what you do with the DB build? You use DB once or twice and then? Because the third usage would take the rest of initiative left…
You will autoattack, or caltrops/dodge and waste your precious evades? Enlighten me please.

You use Cloak and Dagger, Roll for Initiative, Shadow Refuge, or any of the other abilities that allow you to regain initiative, then you Death Blossom some more. Rinse and repeat.

It’s not really an issue of the build. That was just an example I used to illustrate how broken the initiative mechanic is.

Are you aware that this way you wouldn´t kill anyone? And those utilities you named has a minute-long cooldown, what you do next, after those some more blossoms?

No, you can kill plenty of people that way. Caltrops, Death Blossom, going into stealth, coming out with Backstabs, Death Blossoming some more, going back into stealth… It’s pretty easy to stack bleeds and still do a respectable amount of direct damage.

It’s not hard. The fact that Thieves have pretty powerful abilities and lack cooldowns is the problem. Initiative and a lack of a cooldown is the issue. Not the builds. So I’m not going to continue to argue with you about the builds.

The only issues here are your issues I guess…
The initiative is intended to work this way, because Thief is build differently than other classes, if we have CD´s, the Initiative would be pointless and the class would be totally degraded to “light-armor warrior”, which sux and has nothing to do with the stealthy playstyle Thief is supposed to have…

@ Haralin
You say you play an Engineer and that you can’t get stability to stomp. Ever heard of Elixir S? It grants Invulnerability, or the toolbar skill grants either stealth or stability. Problem solved.

Here is a very plain and simple reason why thiefs repeat (spam) skills to kill :

- all the thief weapon sets got 0 or 1 initiative costing skill that deals damage. If the thief cannot use two Pistol Whips one after the other to kill you, he’d do what? Headshot you to headache with pistol 4? Root in place with Sword 2 you until you die of thirst? Blind you until you scratch your eyes out with Pistol 5?

Other classes weapon swap and got a couple different damaging abilities per weapon. Thieves got the weapon 1 skill and sometimes another. Of course they are going to dump their initiative into that other skill when they can! You cannot kill a player doing only 5k worth of damage so we need to use the only damaging skill we have more than once.

Well except the backstab combo but you might have to use Heartseeker more than once on this one.

stof.9341:

nldixon.8514:

You use Cloak and Dagger

C&D regains initiative now? Awesome!

Sorry but the Death Blossom builds aren’t awesome. At best they are average to weak in PvP. Why would you take an average build and use it as a basis that thief needs initiative removed is beyond me.

It doesn’t matter what build it is. There are so many ways to regain initiative on a Thief and still do above average damage and have above average survivability. As long as the initiative is the Thief mechanic and they have no cooldowns, it’s just going to be a series of FotM builds, one after the other, until Thieves are pigeonholed into playing one or two builds that work.

So either initiative needs to be reworked or Thieves are going to keep getting hit with the nerf hammer until they’re almost unplayable. Have you seen what happened to the Ranger profession since the betas? Is that what you want to happen to Thieves?

nldixon.8514:

It doesn’t matter what build it is. There are so many ways to regain initiative on a Thief and still do above average damage and have above average survivability. As long as the initiative is the Thief mechanic and they have no cooldowns, it’s just going to be a series of FotM builds, one after the other, until Thieves are pigeonholed into playing one or two builds that work.

So either initiative needs to be reworked or Thieves are going to keep getting hit with the nerf hammer until they’re almost unplayable. Have you seen what happened to the Ranger profession since the betas? Is that what you want to happen to Thieves?

Repeating something louder again and again doesn’t make it true. You pretended to have some argument as to why initiative needs to go and all you presented was a weak and original build that isn’t imbalanced at all.

Rangers have CDs and no initiative, look at what happened to them since the betas? Is that what you want to happen to Thieves?

As mentioned, HIDDEN THIEF needs bug fixing. It unstealths you too often after being triggered.

Also SIGNET of MALICE needs some rethought. The casting time is too long for how little health you receive. In almost all instances it’s more useful to keep attacking. I suggest increase the health you receive or removing the cast time.

One last suggestion, since thieves have such a low health pool, I think having a grandmaster trait similar to the elementalist’s WRITTEN IN STONE would be useful. It can replace a current grandmaster trait many of which are lackluster. For example HARD TO CATCH which by design almost never works when needed.

nldixon.8514:

stof.9341:

nldixon.8514:

You use Cloak and Dagger

C&D regains initiative now? Awesome!

Sorry but the Death Blossom builds aren’t awesome. At best they are average to weak in PvP. Why would you take an average build and use it as a basis that thief needs initiative removed is beyond me.

It doesn’t matter what build it is. There are so many ways to regain initiative on a Thief and still do above average damage and have above average survivability. As long as the initiative is the Thief mechanic and they have no cooldowns, it’s just going to be a series of FotM builds, one after the other, until Thieves are pigeonholed into playing one or two builds that work.

So either initiative needs to be reworked or Thieves are going to keep getting hit with the nerf hammer until they’re almost unplayable. Have you seen what happened to the Ranger profession since the betas? Is that what you want to happen to Thieves?

I humbly disagree here. The initiative system is a very well thought out system to me. Sure there are many ways to regain initiative, but taking the traits and utility slots to regain your initiative is like just turning up your defense so you could drag out the battle.

Thieves don’t need cooldowns for the basic abilities and the initiative system definitely does not need a fix.

Here’s why.

Let’s say it is “easy” to gain initiative as you said. This would mean specing into Shadow Arts to get the 2 ini when stealthed. Acrobatics for the trait that gives you ini every 10s, Taking the Roll utility, the signet that gives init every 10s. So… sure, in a sense it’s “easy” to get initiative, but what are you sacrificing for it? You lose a lot of possible utility for what? Death Blossom? What kind of fights are you getting into? 1v1 noobie or 1vMany Low levels?
I’ve seen death blossom/bleed out builds that rely on dragging out the battle, and you know what I do on my thief? I just kill them because I know how those thieves fight.

The main problem I see people have is that they get sorta spooked when a thief just pops in and out. There’s not much to it except the element of surprise, and that’s the main thing thieves have easy. Some of their specs are fine and aren’t OP at all. It’s just that players, in general, panic against things they don’t expect, and being a thief makes it easier a bit. The main QQ comes from WvW, and why? It’s because WvW is where more casual players go, compared to PvP. Less experienced players in WvW = more QQ on the class that seems to be the hardest to fight in 1v1 (and thieves aren’t that hard at all… My guild and I always splatter thieves and my job with my thief is to literally chase down runaway thieves sometimes lol, oh and my ele friend too because he can outdistance me in a certain time slot).

And here’s another thing about the ini system. If you use up all your initiative, you’re not going to be able to switch weapons and start with a fresh amount of initiative. Other classes can switch out because they have cooldowns. They can literally chain up 1-5, switch, 1-5. A thief doesn’t have that luxery. What you think is a blessing is also a curse to thieves. That’s why I think the initiative system is well thought out and pretty balanced. (Oh, and if you’re a class with cooldowns and you’re not taking advantage of your weapon switch… do it! lol).

To put it simply: Less QQ and more PewPew? Play the game and learn it. Train your muscle reactions and you’ll see the thief’s advantage is just a trick on your brain.

nldixon.8514:

No, you can kill plenty of people that way. Caltrops, Death Blossom, going into stealth, coming out with Backstabs, Death Blossoming some more, going back into stealth… It’s pretty easy to stack bleeds and still do a respectable amount of direct damage.

It’s not hard. The fact that Thieves have pretty powerful abilities and lack cooldowns is the problem. Initiative and a lack of a cooldown is the issue. Not the builds. So I’m not going to continue to argue with you about the builds.

Here’s the thing. Any thief build worth a kitten is going to run out of initiative if you expect to kill skilled players. If you think a player who knows what he is doing will reliably fall to a sporadic Death Blossom bleed build, you are mistaken. DB bleed builds are meant to apply bleeds to groups of enemies and help your allies chip away the entire group’s health.

I ask you this: What kind of player would sit there in caltrops? The answer is a player who can’t remove cripple or a stack of bleeds. They probably don’t have a stun breaker, have no idea what to do when you stealth, and are in this thread complaining about thieves being overpowered in this way or that.

The build you set up as an example of why initiative is bad (mm-kay) is a relatively slow condition damage build. Additionally, in the battle-report above, Death Blossom has an effective cooldown of about 6 seconds or more (since you aren’t spamming it, right?).

So why is initiative broken in this example? In fact, any build which is designed to never run out of initiative will be rather ineffective in sPvP. Combat moves too quickly for a thief to regenerate “infinite initiative”. Yes, there are ways to enhance initiative regeneration but you have to trait up to those….which are traits better spent elsewhere.

Initiative is a good system and a good thief will definitely run out in stressful situations just like any class will end up with all their skills in cooldown. If your argument is that a thief doesn’t have to run out, well, no class has to have all their skills on cooldown. Good use of abilities and intelligent skill management will leave any class in this game with something to use in most fights.

Unless you have a real reason you think initiative is actually a broken system? Your example just makes zero sense.

I realize there are a lot of Thief apologists in this thread, seeing as how it was posted in the Thief forums and non-Thief players are unlikely to see it. I also realize that no one wants to see their profession nerfed.

The problem with initiative goes hand in hand with cooldowns. Maybe Death Blossom was a bad example, but the point remains that without cooldowns on their abilities, Thieves completely bypass the very check that keeps high damage abilities balanced.

Backstab, which is probably the single most damaging ability in the game, can be used every three seconds. There is no cooldown and a Thief never has to worry about not having enough initiative. A Thief basically only has to avoid getting nailed for three seconds, which is incredibly easy to do, until they get back into stealth and repeat the process.

XENus.6931:

here are the main issues,
PVE!
1. Too paperish… When i got ganked by just 2 monsters, I will just get instantly DESTROYED, which make melee hard. I’m suppose to be an Assassin not a guy who uses a shortbow/ dual pistol sitting at the corner shooting people. I can dodge but what if my endurance level is low, i cant do anything.

2. The pistol skills are too underpowered. The 3rd skill is epic. But the 1st,2nd, and 4th skill just does not do exptected damage.

3.Not much AOE skills, if i do not have a shortbow in my hands, i just get destroyed by 2 mobs. And I suggest that Dagger Main Hand’s 1st skill should be able to damage multiple mobs, except for the last animation.

4.Sword/Dagger. Its so ridiculous how much damage this combination do. The only good skill in my opinion is the 1st and 4th skill thats it. I suggest that u change the 3rd skill, making it balance with the other weapons, so it won’t be underrated.

5. Overall the thief is EXTREMELY underpowered in PVE. Useless in dungeons. Not able to deal enough damage. Classes like elementalist, guardian,warrior,ranger can easily dominate thief. Yes warrior and guardian are op, but look at this.
Guardian/Warrior – Heavy Armor/Big Damage/Able to survive
Elementalist- LA/Insane Damage/Glass Cannon
Ranger- MA/Reasonable damage/Have a pet to tank.
Thief – MA/Awful damage/Die alot
So i would rather play the classes listed above than thief.

Thanks Anet for reading this. I hope that u would really make this class balanced and not underpowered. This class really have potential. Really wanted to play this class, as i wanna be an assassin but unfortunately this class is so underpowered in PVE.

1. I generally outlast everyone in PvE. Use stealth to de-aggro enemies, watch them bleed/choke, regain endurance/initiative, and set yourself to fight again as if it’s the beginning of the battle….only your enemies now have half their original health. Dodge wisely. Don’t dodge Moa Claw Attack #1, take that hit and dodge the daze breath. You can trait up to gain might and regain some endurance when you dodge. I would recommend that (and probably caltrops) for PvE. Additionally, pistol off-hand has an interrupt and S/P has a second one in Pistol Whip. I would never run PvE without a shortbow but being able to switch to S/P add some nice point blank utility.

2. Dual pistol is not, in my opinion, a solo weapon set. It works wonders in groups because you can easily stack vulnerability up to 25 or keep it at a rather steady 15 for the majority of a battle. Skill #1 out of stealth is very good. Skill 4 is used to interrupt big enemy moves. P/P does work in a group against a single or couple of targets but it will definitely get you killed if you are just running around by yourself with it.

3. x/P #5, D/D #3, x/D #4 (not as good as it was but still a good crippling move….just don’t spam it), and shortbow #1/2/4 are all great AoE attacks. Just be sure to share the blinds when you use x/P #5 instead of shooting the same enemy over and over.

4. S/D is definitely better in PvP than in PvE because it’s more about utility than damage. I wouldn’t choose it for AI mobs as we have much more efficient ways to kill them.

5. I think you are missing something about the thief. I run dungeons plenty and easily hold my own so long as there is room to maneuver. I can bring down any enemy below Champion status. I can solo more mobs simultaneously than I can count (as long as they aren’t shooting fire at me…….freakin’ fire). I can harvest/chop/mine anything anywhere whenever I want. I can de-aggro a member of my group and rally him. I can spec to share poisons and boons. I can run from one end of the map to the other faster than any other class (except maybe elementalist……I need to race one). I can call in a couple of buddies from the Thieves Guild, heal/stealth up, and watch them take a ton of damage meant for me.

I think you need to re-evaluate the class and your playstyle. Thief is crazy good at PvE when played correctly :-)

nldixon.8514:

I realize there are a lot of Thief apologists in this thread, seeing as how it was posted in the Thief forums and non-Thief players are unlikely to see it. I also realize that no one wants to see their profession nerfed.

The problem with initiative goes hand in hand with cooldowns. Maybe Death Blossom was a bad example, but the point remains that without cooldowns on their abilities, Thieves completely bypass the very check that keeps high damage abilities balanced.

Backstab, which is probably the single most damaging ability in the game, can be used every three seconds. There is no cooldown and a Thief never has to worry about not having enough initiative. A Thief basically only has to avoid getting nailed for three seconds, which is incredibly easy to do, until they get back into stealth and repeat the process.

It’s really not about that for me. I don’t mind seeing something nerfed when it needs to be. Haste would still be on my hit-list. I think quickness should be removed from the game, personally. But I digress……

Here’s the thing, Backstab doesn’t even use initiative and C&D uses half your pool (6/12…unless you are traited to 15). You can use that maybe 3 times in a row….maybe 4 or 5 if you trait up to gain 2i on stealth and bonus regen on stealth. Even so, you not only have to hit your enemy with C&D 3-5 times in a row, you also have to continually maneuver to their back to get a backstab. Honestly, if you can manage that, they deserve to die and you could kill them much faster than spamming C&D+Backstab every 3 seconds.

I understand what you are saying but it’s really just not a good argument. Backstab spamming (or any skill spamming) on an AI target does not make initiative broken. Spamming a single skill on another player will not get you a kill unless they are bad…..aside from the occasional double Heart Seeker finisher, mind you, which can sometimes work after a drawn out conflict but usually just fails to be effective.

The reason I seem like an apologist is because most of the suggestions in this thread are not based in any reality I’ve been privy to. It’s like everyone who never learned to play a thief just makes stuff up, quotes some random scenario when they “were downed by a thief in 0.05 seconds”, and wants to change things that aren’t broken. Even some of the people saying that thieves are underpowered in PvE seem to be playing a different class than I am even though we are both playing thief.

First things first, I play a condi thief(not that it matters, but w/e). Not here to address all the thief issues at hand, and some of these ideas may have been mentioned already but here goes:

Mug: Could be toned down a tad, maybe 5-10% or bumped to a 20 or 30 point trait. I played a backstab thief for a few days and absolutely couldn’t resist it for being only a 10 point trait. Or perhaps tone the damage down 30%+ and just make this effect passive on steal(rename steal into mug? idk) and replace it with a new Major Trait. (just a thought)

Hidden Killer: Pretty underwhelming for just about everything but Backstab, but in my experience the only people who pick this trait up already have high crit chance(ie glass cannon backstab). How about moving this trait to the 20 or 30 point Shadow Arts slot, forcing anyone who wants to use it for backstab to spread their traits and making sacrifices. Would also give backstab a place to the people who don’t stack a ton of crit, and it seems like it would be more at home in the Shadow Arts tree, given the nature of the trait.

Time for a bit of compare/contrast: Something I would like to point out is a raw dmg thief does, for the most part, some decent dmg with their auto atks alone, hear me out. Since the dancing dagger nerf(I have an idea for this later in the post) most of your initiative is fueling CnD—->Backstabs or Heartseeker spams, these are obviously boosts to your damage. However, a condi thief does pitiful auto atk damage, and is forced to drain loads of initiative to output any dmg at all(D/D perspective, not P/D). In before the apples/oranges comments, but rangers can stack a pretty impressive, albiet short duration, bleed on their shortbow auto atk, just an observation.

With that in mind, I had some ideas for condi thieves:

Dancing Dagger: How about it applies a short 3-5s stack or two of bleed? Since the damage on here is subpar at best now, how bout making it useful to condi thieves apart from the short cripple in pvp? (since using all the initiative of a DD cuts our bleed applications). Perhaps drop the initiative cost by 1?

Bleeds, the thief has the ability to burst a good number of stacks of it on an opponent, but at the cost of a utility(caltrops, if you use it, I do not in most cases), the majority of your initiative, or even your dodge energy(Uncatchable trait).

Since conditions are so easily removed(some classes can do it easier than others, I know), how about a trait that either increases bleed duration a bit, ooooor a chance to apply bleeds on crit. Most condi thieves I talk to use Carrion(4% base crit), I mix Rabid/Carrion for survivability(23% crit because of it), so the trait wouldn’t be too overpowered.

I also wouldn’t be against lowering the cost of Death Blossom by 1 ini, or maybe having it apply 1 more stack of bleed per use. I am open to any suggestions(constructive ones, not flaming).

And this last idea I brought up before, I would love to see something done with this. I recently tried using a venomshare build in fotm, and I was very unsatisfied with it. I wasn’t too upset about the short range(telling ppl in mumble to stack for venoms) for a grandmaster trait, but mainly about turning myself into a gimmick. You have to trade so much utility for such minor effects, so I have a suggestion:

Teerwik.1650

F2-F6 should just be our non elite venom abilities. They aren’t worth the utility slot, and steal really isn’t all that on par with class based abilities like Shatter/DS, thats just my personal opinion

Silent Killer Ruven.1986

I definitely love Teerwik’s idea, maybe give them a global cooldown similar to elementalist attunements when you use one, reduced by points in the Trickery Trait line maybe. I love some of venom utilities, but as they are right now I don’t love them enough to spend a utility on them.

Edit: Going beyond f4 would seem a tad cumbersome tho, so maybe combine/refine the venoms. Say make Spider only apply to 3 hits and also apply a single stack of bleed per hit, making it the DoT venom. Combine Ice Drake and Skale into a the “debilitating” Venom. Change Devourer to a 2 second immobilize on 1 hit, and a short duration cripple on the 2nd hit, to make it a movement impairing one. Give each one something like a 30 second CD, and activate a 15 second shared CD when one is used and drop their duration to about 10 seconds so they can’t be stacked. The Venom traits could use a look at too, but this could open up new strategies.

(edited about 20 hours ago by Silent Killer Ruven.1986)

Feel free to share your ideas or build upon these, I would love some feedback.

Please with the unlimited init stuff… those builds don’t have “unlimited” inti and have no direct damage they can only go condition or have a gimmic like d/p perma stealth and no damage. Conditions can be countered and if you die to a d/p who is speced for init regen and not power/crit then that’s just plan sad.

There are many good points in this thread. The issue I find to be the most objective is the poor performance of S/D’s Flanking Strike.

1. Pathing issues make it unreliable.
2. Even if it connects, the damage is so low that it’s only purpose is boon removal. In that (best) case, it’s an unreliable 4 initiative boon removal that lowers your dps.

I would love to play S/D, but the 3 skill practically forces me to play kitten P to use the Pistol Whip, which does not suit my play or visual style.

I’ve seen a few good suggestions for replacing FS to make it more useful. My favorite is to change it to a defensive parry. If it takes off a boon, great, but it’s more important that the main purpose of the skill functions and is fun to use.

In the first beta I made a warrior, played it a while and moved on to the mesmer, and I got bored of that after a couple hours. I made the mistake of playing the thief next and I played it through all the rest of the betas and far into launch as my main. I love the fast paced style you can use while having a respectable survivability. What I don’t like is how overly effective glass cannon builds are for the thief, though that opinion extends to other classes. I prefer the longer, drawn out fights instead of the five second ones. The thief is more than capable but it’s super quick damage is as bad as having super long CCs.

If you’re a non-thief in here complaining about Stealth, may I direct you over to this thread:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/It-s-great-being-a-Guardian-isn-t-it-guys

I think that last patch only nerf thief and no buff was added as compensation. You nerfed Dancing daggers and give us nothing as compensation even somebody from Anet said that give us some compensation for nerf.

Second thing is that p/p are very weak if i compare it with other weapons. For example Unload – its weak and cost too much initiative. And other p/p skills are very weak. Yes some add weakness or daze but there should be more damage based – daze duration is very short, weakness is too very short so only one good skill is Unload which is still very weak in compare with other weapons. More damage to unload and rework other p/p skills to be more offensive and not only add some useless weakness and funny daze for 0,0001s. Its useless for fight and please lower initiative cost of Unload. I press it 2x and then im without initiative and can do nothing.

Third thing is that there should be some F2-Fx skill for example F1 – steal, F2 stored skill from stealing, F3 poison…etc. It will be good if poisons are on F2-Fx buttons and not take place on normal skill bar. Why almost all other classes has F1-Fx skills and thief only one? Only one skill and not good at all times. Other classes has better skills and more skills.

Fourth. Other classes has much weapons which can use and thief only 4 which can use. I think that thief should use rifles as well. Rifle fit much better to thief character than sword but cannot use it. Warrior can use it and snipe enemies with super power damage and thief not? Cmon Anet. Rifle for thief is nice idea.

Fifth. Most of skills cost too much initiative so when thief use some skill he is defenceless and can only run or stealth – its not good. More initiative or less skill cost please.

Sixth. Please increase range of pistols and bow. Its very low distance. Other profesions sniper me from opposite corner of map and i almost cannot shot target next to me. Its not fair.

And now last and most important problem. Stop please nerfing thief all time some noobs cry here that thief is OP. Thief is paper-based character which must deal fastly much damage. If thief dont deal enough damage on start he die very fast and easily. And main problem is that you nerf thief all time when some kids cry here that thief is OP so thief is now weaker and weaker with every new patch and almost useless because cannot deal enough damage before enemy mobilize and counterattack thief. We have now here paper character with less and less damage with every new patch. I think its not right way for thief but if you want useless paper character with no damage you can continue.

Kurow.6973:

nldixon.8514:

A dagger/dagger build with the right traits will pretty much never run out of initiative if you know what you’re doing.

…is that so…

Do go on…tell us more…in detail!

He’s talking about the DB spam build. D/D with D/D on swap, init on swap, init on healing, roll for init etc etc. You can spam a lot of DB but you still run out of init and that is all that build does.. DB and evade tank.

Jahva.1895:

If you’re a non-thief in here complaining about Stealth, may I direct you over to this thread:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/It-s-great-being-a-Guardian-isn-t-it-guys

I think you mean this one?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Counters-against-thieves

Please consider looking at the issue of Thieves-evading-indefinitely-under-water. There was a thread in the spvp forum on this that got locked because the mod said we had to talk about all theif issues here. Below is the link to the thread. As a summary though:

“I have seen time and time again a single thief holding off a group underwater, with just “evade, evade, evade, evade, evade”. They just sit on the point and spam the evade skill, its silly really.

Also yes I always attack from range- just means I lose the point quicker thief just evades everything I throw at them.

The only way i can see taking one down is to time a stun followed by a one-shot type attack just as the skill ends. However, since there is no CD and given good initiative regen, it seems almost impossible to pull this off (even if you had said stun and one-shot skill).”

Details on this link:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Thieves-evading-indefinitely-under-water/first#post867071

By the way just some feedback: locking all discussion on thief and making us post here-where we cannot properly track or discuss separate issues makes me pretty mad.

pistol whip needs to be looked at

Change it to multiple attacks while moving, and put the stun at the end of the ability, similar to the way hundred blades hits hardest on the final strike(punish’s people for not dodging, but still giving them a chance)

we already have headshot for interupting abilitys quickly, we dont need another easy access stun/daze.

STRanger.5120:

Ralathar.7236:

To tell you what I mean by extreme damage. My level 35 Engineer is toughness/vitality spec’d all the way. I run around with close to 3k armor. I have 29k health. A thief took me down not 20 minutes ago in under a second.

Sorry to argue, but this is not possible anymore, not by single-roaming Thief.
Maybe if he has a 25 stacks of might, fully stacked power sigil and crit food, you were vulnerability-stacked and he had a ton of luck critting avery ability used, then he could burst you down. But I kinda doubt that this ever happened so far….

I don’t have to convince you. It happened, as simple as that. Either it’s still possible or there is an exploit out there atm making it possible. No vulnerability involved and he had a few stacks of might but nowhere near 25 stacks.